Accidental needle sticks can occur in several ways. For example, a sudden movement by a patient can cause a health care worker to lose control of a syringe, resulting in injury. Additionally, injuries often result when contaminated, unprotected needles are left unattended or are disposed of improperly. Moreover, attempts to manually recap a needle after filling the syringe with a medicament or attempts to recap a syringe needle following a syringe procedure can also result in injury. In addition to accidental needle sticks, unnecessary exposure to bloodborne pathogens can result when a health care worker mistakenly re-uses a contaminated needle on a patient.
Unfortunately, accidental needle sticks have the potential to expose a health care worker to a life-threatening virus such as hepatitis or HIV. For each accidental needle stick, health care providers are obligated to test and counsel the exposed worker. Further, follow-up testing for HIV must be conducted approximately six months after the exposure. It is to be appreciated that the costs associated with the testing, lab work, the workers lost time, and the associated tracking and administrative costs, can be considerable.
Heretofore, passive needle protection systems have been disclosed having needle guards that are designed to contact a patient's skin during a syringe procedure. In many of these devices, this contact establishes a relative movement between the needle guard and syringe when the needle is inserted into and withdrawn from the patient. The relative movement can then be used to move the needle guard (relative to the syringe) from an initial position to an intermediate position during needle insertion and from the intermediate position to a final position during needle withdrawal. In these systems, the final needle guard position generally corresponds to a needle guard position in which the needle guard both covers the needle and is locked in place.
One way to place the needle guard into such an intermediate position is to provide a mechanism to rotate the needle guard relative to the needle during needle insertion (i.e. rotation during needle guard movement from the initial position to the intermediate position). However, this rotation is restrained by the frictional force between the needle guard arid the skin. Generally, this restraint prevents the relatively smooth action required to accurately insert the needle into a target location such as a vein. In some cases, the inability of the needle guard to rotate smoothly can prevent the needle guard from properly retracting. When this happens, the needle cannot be inserted to the proper penetration depth and the result is often an unsuccessful syringe procedure.
In light of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a protective device that is installable on a medical syringe and is capable of passively covering and protecting the needle of the syringe after the syringe has been used to perform a syringe procedure on a patient. It is another object of the present invention to provide a protective device having a needle guard that does not rotate relative to the syringe needle during insertion of the needle into the patient. Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a protective device for a medical syringe that is reliable and easy to use.